Always Read the Map

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and yet despite the beauty of the day and place in which we found ourselves my fiance and I sat at the table solemnly. I sat lazily sipping at my tea and nibbled at the food that was placed before me. He, on the other hand, hurriedly gulped down his tea hoping that the creamy substance would ease the headache that was making it hard to enjoy the experience to it's fullest. We had come to our favorite tea house for a full afternoon tea. All you can drink tea served with a salad scones, sandwiches, and desert.

During our tea, I remembered that we had discussed going to the lake that was near my parents house. We had gone for the first time the week before to relax before the start of another busy work week in the city. We had walked around a small part of the lake looking for the perfect spot to sit with our borrowed lawn chairs. It was a very relaxing and enjoyable time, later that week Rossam, my fiance, came up with the idea of walking all the way around the lake. I chimed in readily that it sounded like a good idea. The lake didn't look like a big one and besides my mom had told me on a couple occasions that, when she and my step-dad went, she had walked around the lake with my dog Duo as Roy fished.

As our tea time slowly came to an end I suggested that today would be a great time to go for that leisurely walk around the lake. I needed the exercise and hopefully the fresh air would help ease Rossam's headache.

Excited now we quickly gulped down the last few drops of tea in our cups, paid and rushed to my parent's house. We got there just in time to meet them as they were right at that momment getting home from performing some duties at the church. I told them that we were stealing the dog for a couple hours so we could take him on a walk around the lake. Mom looked shocked, "You're walking around the whole lake?" I nodded cheerfully, "Yep."

"It doesn't get dark until around 8:00, they should have enough time." Roy, my step-dad, chimed in.

With that we said our goodbyes and left for the lake. Arriving at the lake around 4:45pm we parked, grabbed a couple of waters, put the dog on his leash and headed out for our walk. It was beautiful!

Duo was very eager to start the walk. He tugged anxiously at the leash urging us to go faster. Right before the trail started was a sign with information about the lake and the trail we would be taking but Duo and Rossam ran past it. Rossam had set a goal for us, that we would finish the walk in two hours or less and I was too busy trying to catch up to them to stop and look at the map. The first part of the trail was a little painful as there were some hills and my body, namely my legs and ankles, rebelled against me. But Rossam reassured me that the pain would subside as we went on (so male). We even stopped to stretch a little along the way. About an hour in I started having doubts abouts the actual size of the lake and the distance that we would be traveling. However, Duo ran on happily and Rossam confidently told me over and over that we were surely about half way across already. 30 min later I again voiced my concerns about the apparent lack of progress that we were making. What was even more disconcerting was the fact that the small oval lake we had seen from the road was actually snake shaped and we had only seen the tiny head of the serpent. (It was the devil's lake)

After about 2 hours of hiking we finally made it to the end of the serpents tail. We were out of water and I was dying! To make matters worse the sun was starting to go down and I was beginning to get more than a little worried that we would still be walking this trail well into the darkness. More than a couple times the thought of finding the road or going to the nearest campsite and asking for a ride crossed my mind, but we just kept walking forward. By the third hour of hiking new aches and pains started to replace the old ones. These ones were more intense and widespread than the others had been. As we went through the campsites I greedily eyed the soft cushy chairs, the automobiles, tents, and bottles of water that sat out in the open taunting me. Finally, not caring if I got poisoned or not, I refilled my water at one of the water spickets at the campsite used for washing dishes and brushing your teeth.

It was then that I was about to collapse and give up on living that Rossam suggested that we play a game. He would give me five minutes to get ahead of him and jog for as long as possible and he would then try to catch up to me. He wanted to see how fast I could go and wanted to see how long it would take him to catch up to me. I looked at him with unbelieving eyes. "Are you serious?" I asked. He was. So I went, jogged a little then stopped before jogging a little more. It was there gasping between breaths that I cursed his and my dog's boundless energy and optimism.

Needless to say he caught up to me pretty quickly and I was all too happy that he did and the "game" was over. 4 hours later I got a little hope when I recognized the area in which we found ourselves. We had reached the point where we could see the car, a mere silver speck in the distance, but we had been in this area before when we had come to the lake the first time. What was great was that my phone got reception out in the middle of nowhere so I called my mom. I let her know that we were ok and that we would hopefully be there soon... and to have dinner ready for us lol Finally after 4.5 hours of hiking and in near darkness we reached the car.

So that was my adventure. I am still sore. We found out later that the distance around the lake is 10 miles of hills, rocks, mud and bugs. Despite all this we do have plans to tackle the Devil's lake again.

PS only later did I find out that the lake that mom walked all the way around was actually a small pondish lake that was also near their house and not this one hence the suprise when I told her we were going to walk around the whole lake.